Am I The Only One?'s page

The OP's point seems to be "I am unsure if my GM will allow me to X = game broken and bloated, therefore new edition."

This is not an argument. Not only are options... well, optional, and therefore do not in and of themselves prove the brokenness of the system, but there would be no reason whatsoever to believe that a PF 2.0 would incorporate all of the options the OP would like, into a single, streamlined core tome.

Based on the history of virtually every single gaming system ever, the limitations of print, and economic considerations, any new core 2.0 would be as limited as the original, and any options the OP regards as viable for his enjoyment would necessarily be released over the course of years, creating the same complaints of brokenness and bloat as the OP is now suffering from.

Seems to me that everybody is dancing around the elephant in the room. You can argue that spaces on a grid (hex or square) are just spaces, but the game translates distance in the imaginary world BOTH into distance in inches on a grid, as well as measurements of the imaginary space.

This generates easy enough jargon when you're translating a 1-inch square into 5 feet. But it becomes a mess when you translate that 1-inch square into meters.

You either end up in a situation where you are forced to change the grid to centimeters or forced to create grids composed of 50mm squares, but in any case you exasperate a standard that is already in place with hundreds of manufactures of minis, terrains, grids, maps, etc. In any case, you end up counting all of your character's movement two meters at a time, which any honest person should admit was the most obnoxious part of the Star Wars d20 game.

Suddenly, the majority of the market is working in an abstract, either imagining the height of a person as too tall or two short, and none of it making a lot of sense. In terms of describing it at the table, you may as well speak with marbles in your mouth or state your name, sex, race, class and level everytime your character introduces himself.

It is no coincidence that the metric system, while wonderful for measuring distance on a planetary level (being based on the measurements of our own planet) is an absolute crap sandwich in terms of measuring abstracts of human size and movement in an imaginary game, as compared to the imperial system. The imperial system is based on human measurements.

European manufacturers of wargames understand this very well. They make no attempts to convert their systems. There are some games that began based on a metric measurement (15mm games, for instance), but even most historicals measure distance in inches, converting to feet.

This is another of the many, many threads that boil down to "someone in my group is being a real Dick, whether intentionally or accidentally." To which I must give a simple and clear response.

Talk to them, privately and outside the game, and inform them that their behavior is making you question if you'd like to continue playing with them. Hope they change their tune, and if they don't then remove yourself or them from the group.

This. And also, dear OP, be aware that as much as we love to think we are so, so innocent in every situation wherein we find ourselves feeling the ire of another person, we very, very rarely are.

What I'm saying is you might consider whether your attitude, things you say, the manner in which you carry yourself, or describe what you are doing, is an irritant to this person (and possibly to others).

It takes two to tango. It really does. One guy to be a jerk and another guy to react to the jerkiness. You've described your amazing ability to optimize. Wonderful. That, itself, is not an evil. You've also described a few routines you consistently used. Boring, but not an evil. What you haven't mentioned, are the ways in which you approached those things at the table.

I suspect it is not as pretty a picture as you would have us imagine.

And by the way, this is about the ten-millionth thread in which a proud optimizer has made his GM out to be a terrible jerk "for no apparent reason" while leaving out his own behavior. Gettin' old, guy.

Still, pornography has been shown to have some influence in causing a few issues. Younger viewers often have their expectations of sexuality influenced by pornography (Is my body suppose to be look like that? Is that the most pleasurable way to have sex? What the hell is this 'foreplay' real women are expecting me to do? Am I suppose to do what those women in the videos do?)

I would like to see some real evidence of that from a legitimate study. My understanding is that this is little more than anecdotal, Oprah-style pseudo psychology. I have never seen a genuine medical study that correlated a real connection between porn and body image, and I wouldn't expect to see one.

Kids generally get their body image problems from peers, from the locker room, from parents, etc. Those are REAL influences that act upon a person's psyche day after day after day, representing data from people who actually matter to us. There's no comparison. As for being clumsy at sex... how many of us were the Greatest of Lovers right out the gate on our first dates? Why blame that on porn? That's just part of growing up.

I have seen a legitimate study from Johns Hopkins, no less, that correlated a possible decline - yes, DECLINE - in reported violent sexual offenses in areas where porn was more readily available.

As with all things that are fun, I think porn needs to be taken in moderation. As the father of a friend once said when we were randy teens, "you don't want to skin the derby."

Sleeping in nothing but a belt and a headband...

Sounds like the '80s.

I've never been sold on Golarion as the name for a planet.

The planet you come from, generally, I think, is going to have a short, rather primitive name, because it's going to be or descend-from one of the first words your species ever uttered, or from a similar word for soil, dirt, rock, etc. Earth has a plethora of related, short, primitive names, from all around the world. Because it's like... the first thing our ancestors noticed.

No caveman ever walked out of a cave, looked around him, grabbed a handful of soil, and muttered "Golarion!" Did that caveman also call a bird a "matsophylianscilian," or a rock a "flotsoformilion," or milk "thepsokiltolion?"

Golarion is clearly a more evolved word, probably a compound made from forgotten words from some extinct language.

Now, if, as has been suggested, the name came from a race of elves, who happened to be the first sapient life to visit, I can see that. Golarion would be like Saturn, or Neptune. A name from myth, applied to the planet upon discovery.

Still not fond of the actual word, though. "Golarion." It's clumsy. Also, it sounds exactly like something some astrophysicist grad student would name the new rock or malformed and meteor-stricken dwarf planet he found limping around the asteroid belt.

You can tell I've always loved the name, right?

It depends on who's using the word. Me, I use them as synonyms. Also, I don't think being a power gamer is necessarily a bad thing. If someone can play well with others, share spotlight, enjoy the RP parts of the game, then I'm perfectly happy with them having a powerful character.

See, all you've done here is change the definition of the term and made it meaningless.

Let's a compare a good husband with a bad husband, shall we? A good husband is faithful, good to his wife, good to his kids, and supports his family.

And you know what? That's pretty much synonymous with a bad husband. So long as the bad husband doesn't cheat, doesn't hurt or neglect his wife or his kids, and doesn't quit his job and become a slacker.

Yeah, in that case, "good husband" and "bad husband" ARE pretty much synonymous. Good job!

TriOmegaZero wrote:

gnoams wrote:

One of the rules is the list of challenge ratings and appropriate encounters based on party level.

This is a misunderstanding of the rules, actually, as explained here.

That may be true for some other game published by some other company back 7 years ago, but misunderstanding or not, it is a common understanding. So if you intend to not adhere to it, I would suggest informing your players of said decision before the game.

If your players think they can kill everything, than something led them to that belief. It was either their previous experience with playing pathfinder, or their experience thus far with you as a GM.

Before I begin my rant, allow me a moment to ponder where you got the figure of "seven years." Seems to me what you're saying is that, before Pathfinder codified the CR guidelines, us old dudes might have gotten away with this sort of thing, but not now. But, the CR system showed up in 2000, with D&D 3.0. That was fifteen years ago. So if you're trying to prove that the current system weened a crop of gamers who won't put up with certain storytelling tropes, as did their predecessors, you're going to have to revise your figures. And you're going to have to do something more to prove it.

Begin rant.

It may be an "understanding" amongst certain groups, but you called CR a rule. And it is NOT a rule. CR is a guideline, but if you read what it actually represents, you can see a lot of room for adjustment, depending on the scenario. A GM does not need to adhere to a strict model of 20% resources/4 characters/4 times a day, and frankly, not only would I go crazy if I allowed myself to be forced into this model every single day of every single session, my players would probably eventually walk out on my boring butt, probably right after they killed me. It is perfectly acceptable, for instance, to throw the party a single encounter for the day, that uses up all their resources for that day. An extended fight with an invading army comes to mind.

That said, players don't need a reason to believe every encounter is winnable, beyond the simple metagaming mindset that "it is a game, therefore it MUST be winnable."

I can tell you, I have been a GM going on about 34 years now, and there has been at least one player in every single group, who could not separate his knowledge that he was playing a game, from his character's understanding of the world around him. (That's called metagaming, by the way, and it is also a no-no.) But in every single one of those gaming groups, there was always - ALWAYS - at least one player who was the calm voice of reason, warning the others not to metagame this, and approaching the possibility of a no-win encounter with much caution.

Two players currently fill this role in our group. One is my 14-year-old-son, so your subtle implication that only grognards understand that a game might have a rare unwinnable encounter is now on uncertain footing. The other player's name is Travis. Travis started playing with me when he was in his early 'twenties, about... hey! About six or seven years ago! Travis has NEVER tolerated metagaming. Travis is the first in the fight. But he's also the first to realize when the situation is unwinnable, and he's the first to say-so.

Your problem here is simple. You forget that not everything in the game world follows or must be ruled by the game mechanics. Some things are story elements, and an encounter with a big, highly intelligent, god-like being who could swat you like a fly, falls under that heading, and sorry, very sorry, is not only good drama, is not only good storytelling, but is absolutely within the scope of the GM's authority.

LazarX wrote:

About 36 million people died in the First World War. Multiples of that number were injured or displaced. No previous war had anything even close to it.

I'm just going to leave this here.

And once again, we find ourselves reminded that Asians do everything better than Westerners. Apparently, including massive war casualties.

Cthulhu isn't written up even remotely powerful enough to stand a chance against a level 20 mythical party. It's also hyper-intelligent, so won't do stupid stuff. It would be stupid to give a bunch of crunchy insect critters (the PCs) a chance to harm its precious hide. It won't fight them on their own terms, it will fight them on it's terms.

This. Cthulhu's Intelligence is 31. Which means he is far smarter than everybody on the this forum, the GM running the adventure, and all his players put together.

The notion that he would just stand around in a straight-up fight and let a party of uber powerfuls run right over him is crazy.

Really, all things being equal, this level of Intelligence would mean that playing him correctly would involve the GM creating a long list of outlandish contingencies nobody else could ever think up, and then playing Cthulhu as if he thought them up on the fly. That might begin to simulate his smarts.

Problem is, your average gaming group would interpret that as an unfair nerf. Because, for the most part, players are unreasonable people. (Just saying - we all want it both ways, don't we?)

So my answer would be... don't let them fight Cthulhu.

It's fun to have his stats in a rulebook and everything. But this just smacks of the old 1st Edition days, when you had to sit around listening to the worst players bragging about how their DM let them kill Arthur (from Deities & Demigods), and how they took Excalibur and used it to kill all the other Knights, and then did unspeakable things to Guinevere, etc., etc. It's just a gross, juvenile masturbatory fantasy that can't really lead to anybody ever getting a date/functioning in society/the like. It's the sort of bragging rights that makes it so the people who laugh at and hate us just look right to do so.

Jiggy wrote:

Quark Blast wrote:

And that segues nicely over to Tolkien's fantasy writing. Ugly = Evil there too? Maybe, but...

Galadriel spoke

Quote:

In place of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen! Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the dawn!

And then there's old Annatar, described here as "fair" to look upon.

But, yeah, Morgoth, Ungoliant, etc. were pretty ugly as a matter of course.

Don't forget that when trying to decide if they could trust Strider, a comment was made among the hobbits (I think Frodo said it?) that if Strider were a bad guy, he (Frodo) would have expected him to "look fairer and feel fouler".

Yeah, Tolkien is often oversimplified.

Morgoth and Sauron both used their fair appearance to deceive and seduce and lost it, becoming not so much ugly as terrible.
Ungoliant is a spider-monster. What do you expect, really?

More generally, while it's often described as simplistic black and white, good vs evil, the history of Middle-Earth is the history of the Fall.
The elves aren't pure good, the ones we meet are literally fallen from grace, those who turned aside from the road to heaven or who were tricked and seduced by Melkor into leaving it. And their descendants of course.
The Dunedain are the last remnant of Numenor, after that land was corrupted and rebelled. Even they who were the Faithful then have fallen from what they were - kingdoms falling into ruin and strife amongst themselves. Denethor and Boromir both fall within the story in their own separate ways.
The true heroes of the story are the humble hobbits, who aren't nearly as fair and beautiful as the elves or even the Dunedain. And they have their failings, as the Scouring of the Shire shows us.

Tolkien could be very whimsical. He did have a sense of humor. Though it is a recurring theme in his works that evil can disguise itself behind a fair face, and I have heard this argument before, for a supposed "deep meaning" behind Frodo's comment, I really do believe that this was meant to be a reflection of Frodo's good judgment and a sort of in-joke that Strider is dirty and grizzled from living outdoors.

Sometimes... in fact, more often-than-not, a cigar is just a cigar.

But if we really, really have to play with it like it's something else... knock yourself out.

Not quite, if you go by these diagrams:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/combat/space-reach-threatened-area-te mplates

For example, look at the 30' cone. It looks like you sweep out a 30' distance from your point of origin, so each side is 30', and the max distance down the center is also 30'. It's not a right circular cone, but a conical spherical section like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_sector

So, if you wanted max radius, you should be X/sqrt(2) above the ground, and you would end up with X/sqrt(2) in radius: 10' radius for 15' cone, 20' radius for 30' cone.

No. Because a cone is a cone.

A cone spell has the 3D shape of a right circular cone with height X and a base diameter of X, where X is the listed length. So a 15' cone spell like colorspray has a height of 15' and a diameter of 15'.

So shooting it downwards would affect a 3x3 cross on the ground as you originally asked. because of how the grid system handles non-5' increments.

Yes. Because a cone is a cone.

MisterDoug wrote:

My ideal party composition is 6 or fewer people who get along and can have fun playing the game. Class composition is secondary.

Thank you for completely disregarding the idea behind this thread, this was a useful addition to this conversation.

To be fair, though, your question was loaded in the first place. You, yourself, and just about everyone else, is really just saying "fighter, cleric, wizard, rogue," only under guise of other classes that are just fancier ways of filling the same iconic roles.

And the game always had at least some alternatives. The Druid has been alternate to the cleric (existing as a subset) from just about the beginning, and you could even have considered the dwarf (yes, otherwise a race) to be an alternative to human fighter in some of the basic boxes.

Pants don't exist on me at this present moment. For those who were interested.

LazarX wrote:

Valantrix1 wrote:

I'm thinking that should have been a focus instead of a material component.

No.. foci are reusable. Keeping the item a component adds to the per casting cost as intended.

It doesn't work right, either way.

As a material component, it gets destroyed during the casting, so no memories get stored.
As a focus, it could be used with multiple castings, rather than one gem per casting.

Edit: Probably, it should be a focus, with the proviso:
"As long as a gem has stored memories in it, it cannot be used as the focus for this spell."

I think you just ignored what he said and inserted a wish list. That's not an argument. That's just you saying what you think would be more convenient.

This thread is full of especially entertaining sentences. Here are a few of my favorites.

“I'm going to run an encounter where the players play a five-headed half-chromatic dragon hydra as part of a reverse-dungeon style adventure.”

“It's kind of like naming your wizard Jandalf or Berlin.”

“Hasslehoff has no reason to take combat reflexes with 10 dex.”

“The Minotaur Urban Ranger with TWF was a mistake…”

The cave druid archetype can wildshape into an ooze, and there's an alchemist archetype that uses bottled oozes like summons.

See! And there are those who think all these supplements and splat books are a bad thing!

How can anything be bad that brings us ooze wranglers?

Thelemic_Noun wrote:

I'm trying to figure out a difference in background, training, and mentality

Hold it right there, kemosabe.

That's not how it works.
Classes do not come with specific backgrounds, trainings, or mentality. Class is not concept, concept is not class. With rare exception (wizard, perhaps), in-game-world, there is no such thing as a class; nobody knows they even exist, much less that they have one. You could line up a slayer, a ranger, and a rogue shoulder to shoulder and nobody could go 'that's a slayer, that's a ranger, that's a rogue'...

Nix ranger from that and add it to the list of in-game-world identifiables with wizard. Ranger is not only a class, but a related occupation, and was/is a real thing in real life, and definitely is an identifiable occupation/class (if you will) in Middle Earth and other fantasy sources.

If you handed a standard Forgotten Realms novel to a person off the street with no experience in fantasy whatsoever, he would read the words "rogue," "slayer," and "fighter" and never know it was anything other than a shady person, a killer, and a guy who likes to fight, respectively.

But when he read the word "ranger," he would have as complete a picture in his head as if he had read the word "wizard."

Because rangers are guys who hang out in the woods, stop poachers, deal with animals, rescue the lost, etc.

Crime Lords have dealt with Olive Oil and Bananas. Especially bananas.

And construction. And garbage collecting... and the art trade. And horse racing. Used car dealerships.

The list goes on and on.

The Fox wrote:

Brom the Obnoxiously Awesome wrote:

Lastly, I'm sorry I used Meta Gaming wrong, I'm still getting used to the lingo. Like seriously... Hit Dice doesn't sound like it's got anything to do with Level.

*GASP*

No worries. We were all new once.

"Hit Dice" is a weird term, especially in the context of PFS. It has nothing to do with hitting anything and no dice are involved.* :)

*Technically, it is about hitting something and dice are involved (or at least they were).

The term is a carry-over from even before 1st-edition D&D. It comes from D&D's origin from its wargame roots. It is also something that every beginner gets confused about until it is explained.

A "Hit Die" is the die you would roll (if we weren't playing PFS) to determine how many hit points you have when you gain a level. Your "Hit Dice" are all of these collectively. The term "Hit Dice" (abbreviated "HD") also refers to simply this number. For characters, that is also their total character level. For monsters, it is their monster racial Hit Dice plus any character levels they might have.

Wow. The Bestiary just started making a whole lot more sense.

!!!

LOL

(Dragonlance is THE reason that gnomes suddenly acquired the Mad Tinker hat).

Not sure they should get all the credit. Tolkien jokingly used the term "Gnome" to refer to his most technologically advanced Elves, and he also used them to help Santa in the "Father Christmas Letters."

One could easily draw a line between the modern image of the soft-capped gnome and the tinkering, handy dwarves of Disney's Snow White.

After all, the concept of the gnome was invented by a self-proclaimed alchemist as a proposed familiar for help in the lab.

2) Magitech is ancient, mysterious technology
Inspired by Numenera and Outlaw Star, this approach to magitech involves the technology originating from ancient, lost civilizations...

I get that we're all required under threat of banishment from all RPGs ever if we don't all mindlessly worship Monte Cooke, but must we all be forced to slavishly attribute to him as completely his original work, plot devices that even hacks such as Terry Brooks were coming up with decades ago?

I'm sort of getting tired of it.

It isn't these guys?

MagusJanus wrote:

Hey, let's be fair. A lot of Americans don't even know who the Vice President is. (It's Clinton, right?)

It's Bozo the f$@+ing Clown, for all intensive porpoises.

Joe Biden is a saint!

A loud, weird, whisky-swilling, skirt-chasing, hard-talkin', no-malarky-takin' freak of a saint.

And I actually kind of like him.

He should've broken all that glass, leapt up on the checkout counter, and taken a... well, you get where I'm going with this.

Orcs are scarier with chaos.

"Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear."

- Stephen King, 2008

To me d&d style games are best when role play, story, and combat are in mostly equal measure.

Never understood why, those who say they have the most fun when role play is 90% or more of what happens, they play games like d&d when there are other things like 'live action role play' which is 100% RP.

I like things in equal measure, too, but to answer your question here more directly, LARP requires money be spent on costuming, accessories, and some skill or talent be required in those things, and time spent on them. Not to mention that getting up in front of people, often in public, is embarrassing for many. (Not to mention that there are plenty of LARPs out there that DO revolve around at least basic rules systems, making them less than 100% RP in that regard.)

Playing a tabletop game around a table is a totally different experience that for many people requires less commitment and is less embarrassing. Some people like more riddles and plot. Some people like more combat. You could argue that people who like more combat ought to be playing wargames, and people who like more riddles ought to be spending Friday night reading puzzlers to each other, or even that people who want plot should be LARPING, but in the end neither you nor I get to decide how much chocolate another guy likes with his peanut butter, or how much peanut butter he likes with his chocolate.

Unlike conventional board games, RPGs are what you make of them and need not adhere to a strict game play format or single style of play.

Those costumes are cute. Of course, if you watch your Saturday morning cartoons, you know this style is nothing new. There are plenty of "normally" dressed or covered up heroes on TV and in kids' comics. But a few points remain in order.

Firstly, somebody has to point out that once again we have here the modern American hypocrisy. That is, that it is somehow wrong for a superheroine to show cleavage, but it's perfectly fine for little girls to run around with swords and knives. Read: sex = bad, mmm'kay? Violence = real, real good.

Secondly, not every female superhero shows cleavage. Some do, but as I've pointed out time and time again, the most naked heroes in Fantasy and Sci-Fi are generally male (Conan, Tarzan, etc.) and nobody ever runs to their rescue or complains about the exploitation of men. Can you tell me with a straight face that there is something inherently wrong with Spider-Woman's costume that cannot be applied to Spider-Man's? Both are tight fitting and both completely cover, or nearly so. Should I be afraid that because there are boobs on Spider-Woman's chest, that civilization is doomed to fall? How about the prominent bulge in Spider-Man's crotch that haunted his comics all through the 'nineties? Has the world ended and I just didn't notice?

Thirdly, there is nothing wrong with liking tight or revealing costumes on human beings. Certainly, everybody thinks it's okay to like them on guys. It's a double standard to x them from females. Titillation is not evil. It's a normal part of human nature. And so-called "objectification"? Really? Has there ever, ever been a study (other than one paid-for by James Dobson or Reader's Digest and conducted by Christian think tanks sans actual scientists) that actually PROVED that such a thing exists? Have any of you ever - EVER - known a guy who looked at a picture of Ms. Marvel, put down the comic, and said to himself, "You know, now that I've seen that picture, I'm convinced that women are nothing but inhuman automatons built for my sole sexual pleasure?"

Hogwash.

I've never known a girl who looked at Supergirl and came away convinced that she was inferior and ugly. You know who made me feel bad about my body growing up? It wasn't a comic book or Stallone or anybody on TV. It was other kids, bullying me to make their own sad selves feel better. Yes, I am a guy, but give me a break. Girls are mean to each other. We all know it. Comic books are the least of their troubles.

We call these sorts of "acceptable" witch hunts "moral panic." You'd think a bunch of people playing a game that was banned by reactive parents as "satanic" would know better by now.

I know, way old thread, but seemed worth me making a comment. ...

IT WASN'T.

Aren't barbarians supposed to be unbalanced? I mean, that's what makes them rage, right? Lack of balance in life?

Oh, you meant imbalanced.

Where's the dude whose werewolf rogue/paladin/monk or whatever he was regularly digs a 10-foot-deep trench around a twenty-foot-wide encampment with his bare hands each night before bedding down?

That's pretty hilarious.

I would assume "toon" comes from the appearance of WoW characters looking cartoonish? If that's the case, why on earth would you use the term in reference to an imaginary character with no cartoonish avatar in a tabletop game?

Player Character, character, "my guy," "my dude," "my (insert character class here)" all have worked for decades before the advent of that most troublesome, noisome, pushy, all-encroaching and very unworthy slugfest.

I suppose if we came up with a term that was more in line with the format of a tabletop game, like say...

Imaginality (imagination + personality)

...I would be more open to the suggestion of a change.

But as it stands, it just seems like some here have a bit of salt and are enjoying rubbing it in the eyes of those who have a stronger preference for traditional terminology in their traditional games.

while not exactly game breaking, it does beg the question: why bother ever putting the D% into the rules instead of just using a single D10? would that not be simpler?

I have a 5 in 10 chance of beating a 5 when rolling a d10.

I have a 50% chance of beating 50% when rolling d%. That means I could roll anything between a 01, though 45, up to 49, and 50 to beat.

Those two things are not the same.

I assume you've been doing fractions in school and have division on the brain, or something. Makes you think you can simplify odds in the same way. But actually, it's more complicated than that.

I don't see how heavy armor really means anything.

3 more AC wont save you enough from a monster swinging at +30.

A simple +1 to any stat could mean the difference between life and death. At ANY level.

That 35 AC is a little higher than usual...

LOL

An AC of 35 is a "little higher than usual..."

...for a 17th level fighter.

I'm excited to be able to get non-OGL minis and I'm hoping for a price drop all around.

I don't understand this statement at all. Miniature figures used for D&D (as well as Pathfinder) have traditionally been the domain of manufacturers OTHER than TSR/WotC/Paizo.

Grenadier, Games Workshop, Ral Partha, Reaper, and others were responsible-for or continue to be responsible-for the miniatures used in the game and its variants going all the way to the beginning.

What is an "OGL mini," if you don't mind my asking? What makes a "true OGL goblin" better than a goblin from GW or Reaper or Heresy, or any other maker, for that matter? Does your game suck because a hunk of plastic representing a dragon doesn't have a WotC copyright on the bottom? Seriously?

Unless you mean that the "build" and attendant card from WotC's horrid, god-awful line was the thing that made it "official" and "special?"

Yes, I need another Holy Avenging Half-Ogre Abyssal Gnoll Archer for my game, please. Not likely. Their builds were terrible, jokey nerd fests that nobody could possibly find a use for in about 110% of homebrewed games. (And for that matter, I don't think those builds appeared anywhere outside of the miniatures game, either - not like they were making adventures to go with them.)

No thanks. I'll stick with manufacturers of unpainted minis that I can mod and paint and stat up myself without scratching my head over how I'm going to explain how a bullette mated with a half-giant ooze and the offspring managed to get trained by the Six Mages of Nergasium in the fine art of shooting oversized shuriken from a longbow while maintaining his form as a fine, red mist.

A "4th trimester abortion" is called "adoption."

Indeed. Added to must see list.

Could a druid cast an awaken spell on an animal, have that animal take levels in druid, and then have the animal repeat the process until an army of intelligent animals is at his disposal?

I like it. Put it to music and I'll buy it!

I pulled this stunt on a party back in a 2nd Ed campaign and elicited nothing but groans. I think even then the idea was so well worn that pretty much anybody who saw a full-length mirror expected a duplicate to jump out of it.

Be sure if you do this to know your players well. It can result in one of those moments of rolled eyes and bored sighs.

Eight is an EVIL number...

Figure eight... is two times four. Figure four... is half of eight...

If you skate... you would be great... if you could skate a figure eight.

That's a circle that turns back upon itself.

Place it on its side and it's a symbol meaning... infinityyyyyyyyy...

I live in a country where firearms are illegal. Some persons like hunters and policemen do have firearms, with a lot of restrictions. Nobody is allowed to carry any firearm with her in public, just for fun or protection or anything. I can say my country is really safe and comfortable. Some years ago they even banned bigger knives and a lot of other weapons. Nobody cares, because nobody needs that stuff.

Honestly, the thought of people carrying a gun at a gaming event i am would make me uncomofortable. Even if you are a responsible person, s#~% happens. And there might be other persons not as responsible. In my eyes, firearms should be banned. Globaly. There are much more important things to produce than instruments that only bring death, pain and suffering.

I think Mike made a good call there. The only weapons you need on a PFS event are your gaming dice and a sharp mind.

I can't possibly give this enough favoriting.

Here in the SF Bay Area, if licensed, you can carry openly, but it has to be unloaded, and a cop can stop you to check at any time. Over the past couple of years, guys have been showing off by wearing openly to places like Starbucks, causing people to worry. When asked, they throw a fit about it and make a scene.

Next day, they call all their buddies and twenty or thirty people will show up with guns at Starbucks, just to prove a point. Without fail, whenever a news crew interviews one of these guys, and the reporter asks, "are you trying to intimidate people?" the guy will say "No, but I want people to know they can't mess with me. If they mess with me, there will be trouble."

And this is the big problem I have with people in this country walking around with guns. It's not the guns themselves. I actually feel safer knowing the cops have them. It's that guys like these cannot understand that making sure "nobody messes with them" IS THE SAME THING AS TRYING TO INTIMIDATE PEOPLE. And saying that if somebody messes with you, there will "be trouble," is a threat.

These people wear their guns to show off, to rub the fact in the faces of those who aren't comfortable about it, and to threaten and intimidate others. They call it "liberty," but it's really about challenging and troubling the liberty of others. These are all very immature behaviors that I think, unfortunately, too many gun owners have in common. Worse yet, some of them are just paranoid.

Are there responsible gun owners? Sure. On very, very rare occasions, does somebody protect their home with their gun? Rarely -- VERY RARELY, but yes. Most of the rest of the time, people just act like babies. And hurt themselves. And others. Because they're carrying guns around for all the wrong reasons.

It shoots webs, too!

I'm a big fan of the City of Seattle. And I love Paizo. And even though I live in the SF Bay Area, I'm only mildly disappointed that the 'Niners stalled-out.

But I have to echo the sentiment that Seattle's players and managers are being less than likeable this year, and will add that their fanbase have in general been loud, obnoxious, and generally poor winners.

Boo.

I suppose I should not be surprised, nor begrudge Paizo for sporting the home team's colors, but...

Boo.

Boo, you terrible Seattle fans, you. (Especially my buddy's recently transported wife, clearly miserable at moving here from Washington, who has got to be amongst the most intolerably obnoxious - and MEAN - Seahawks fans on the planet.)

This thread stinks of rotting cheese.

I think this is more unfortunate wording from Paizo being twisted away from its spirit and turned into something sort of... abhorrent and stupid.

Clearly, a troll can starve to death. Why? Well, firstly, because the rules say that the regeneration cannot stop it from happening. Secondly, where on earth does the troll get the energy needed to continue regenerating if it does not eat something? Remember, regeneration is an Extraordinary ability (Ex), NOT a Supernatural (Su) ability. The troll is not regenerating through magic or some external source. It is regenerating via its own body's internal beyond-human ability. POWERED BY ITS OWN BODY.

No food = no power to regenerate.

The lame (make that UNBELIEVABLY LAME) position in these arguments that the rules somehow work RAW out of context of some in-game element, makes me want to vomit. The rules aren't just rules for rules' sake. They EMULATE something. You have to understand them in context.

Yes, Paizo did it again: they worded the rule in an unfortunate way (though the entry can easily be seen to be using the second paragraph to caveat the first -- but let's not confuse the cheese hunters with a big word like "caveat"). But we all should know what they're talking about. The spirit of the rule is clear. So long as the troll is not suffering from suffocation, starvation or thirst, it can regenerate and nothing OTHER THAN DAMAGE FROM THOSE THREE THINGS can kill it until it comes into contact with whatever OTHER damage form its regeneration cannot overcome. But if it IS starving, dying of thirst or suffocating, not even its regeneration can save it.

I feel like the Joker doesn't convince people, he just maxes out intimidation and scares the **** out of people by showing to what lengths he will go.

+10 points for good grammar.

Oh! Oh! Me! Me!

Oh... nevermind.

Let the GM role play/indicate to you who is smitten by your celestial beauty.

This.

Aside from me thinking you're pretty hot, you will just have to cast a line out to whoever you want to charm, and see if they bite.

I have no interest in writing Ultimate Bodily Functions and Physical Upkeep (with an Appendix on Proper Food and Liquid Storage).

Oh! Please? PLEEEEAAAASE?!?

Bard fits. Very Bombadil-ish. Problem is the OP says the player in question is "iffy" about the roleplaying aspect. Playing a bard might put her on the spot.

I might consider encouraging a straight-up fighter type, with the Catch Off-Guard and Throw Anything feats. That way, she can throw rocks and use other improvised weapons with ease. Very handy in a place like Bree, where an attack could come in the Prancing Pony, or other such public place.